]]>Thanksgiving begins the season of reflection, expressing gratitude and thanks. At Thanksgiving, many of us gather with family, friends and others we bond with. We spend time with people with whom we feel a connection. We express our gratitude to those who have helped us in small or large ways. We count our blessings and commit ourselves to do greater good for our family and the community we serve.

Thanksgiving is a great opportunity to find common ground among others. We truly have strength in numbers — the strength of different mindsets, ideas, aspirations and ways of effecting change. Focusing on our collective strengths helps us achieve a deep bond. For one day, we come together for the sheer benefit of coming together. We put personalities aside and leave conflict behind. We listen, are thoughtful and practice patience. We get outside ourselves and put others first.

I am sure we can do more than set aside our differences for just one day a year. We can take this approach out into the world in our daily interactions. We can accept different lifestyles, work styles, actions and choices of others as theirs and glean insight and perspective from others. Our differences can be our strength and inform us in new, rewarding ways.

When we appreciate the differences in others, we can begin to let them color our lives. We can live in gratitude that no two people are exactly alike. We may be cut from the same cloth, but we each have a unique design and purpose. This Thanksgiving, and going forward, let’s show our gratitude by setting aside what we think we know about others and staying on common ground. Let’s make a choice to embrace others one and all.

]]>A little gratitude goes a long way. Gratitude, even in small amounts, can enhance our lives by shifting our perception of our situation and circumstances. The good news is that nothing about our situation and circumstances actually needs to change for us to experience gratitude. Gratitude is not about changing things for the better — it’s about appreciating what’s right in front of us. It’s also not a Pollyanna, pie-in-the-sky attitude. There’s no need to deny the difficult realities of the world or life in general. Life happens. What’s amazing is that these difficult realities and feelings of gratitude can co-exist.

Gratitude is both a feeling and a practice. Like anything we practice, it develops over time. It may seem counterintuitive to practice gratitude in times of difficulty, but that’s when we need it the most. By becoming aware of the good things in our lives, no matter how small, we begin to feel a sense of peace and wellbeing. When we practice gratitude as an approach to life, we begin to feel like the calm in the storm as opposed to the calm before the storm. Daily issues and difficult situations lose their hold over us. This is not to say we no longer have anger, frustration, sadness or difficult circumstances in our lives but that we develop healthier, more balanced responses to life. Positivity takes over and we become a sort of living, breathing solution.

The practice of gratitude is simple. It is a learned habit. While some people write in gratitude journals or go out of their way to express thanks, it can come down to something as small as a number two pencil and a yellow sticky note or even your smartphone where you can record your gratitude. One thing that I believe is important — writing out, speaking or stating what we’re grateful for. It’s not enough to be grateful in our heads. Something happens when we write, speak or discuss our gratitude. It’s no longer just a thought. It’s been committed and reinforced.

In an effort to balance life’s realities with gratitude, it can be helpful to acknowledge that we are not in control over many things that weigh us down. We can get rattled rushing from place to place, being stuck in dense commuter traffic or any of life’s normal disruptions. By acknowledging that something is beyond our personal control, we also give ourselves permission to stop berating ourselves over it. For example, we have no control over what others may think. When we accept that, we can start to experience some relief from worry.

Practicing writing a few lines or speaking for a few minutes each day is a great way to take the action of gratitude. By writing down one or two things we can’t control, and following up with what we are grateful for, we are able to shine some light on the dark thoughts in our heads and cultivate positive thoughts in our hearts. This is a meaningful start to each day and it can take less than sixty seconds. With consistency, we move to gratitude in real time as we move through our days, weeks and months. This approach gives us a balanced outlook and can help us through otherwise difficult times. We each have things to be grateful for — and opportunities for gratitude are everywhere.

]]>One of the most powerful things we experience is seeking to improve ourselves. We can surely reboot or start over completely, though that does take much, much longer time. I do believe we can turn a situation or shortcoming around in a much shorter timeframe, if we are committed to change and learn faster. If we find ourselves troubled by our own actions, or our human failings are glaringly obvious, a courageous look inward can be a great motivator for change. Fair warning: change isn’t always comfortable. In fact, if it is comfortable, it’s not change!

Self-defeating actions can become like a pebble in our shoe — it may bother us a bit in the beginning but if we don’t address it we will soon feel full-on pain that we could have avoided. We have to pay attention to recurring actions that bring negative outcomes just like we would a pebble in our shoe. If we don’t pay attention to it, it becomes a problem. This is where self-doubt serves a purpose. It makes us aware of our own self-defeating actions.

While self-doubt has its merits, it’s equally important to not fall too deeply into the self-doubt trap. We can bring on an “overabundance of self-awareness” when we begin looking at our shortcomings. While it may seem like self-awareness is good in any amount for personal growth, we can develop a burdensome feeling of over-responsibility. We should focus our efforts on change as a habit. We must also learn to prioritize and not get into self-admonishment. We must focus on our progress.

Self-admonishment can be tricky to identify when we are mired in the behavior. It can present itself as negative self-talk hidden behind “constructive criticism.” Blatant self-critique, such as “I’m ugly” may be obviously detrimental, but a day filled with “what ifs” can quietly — and significantly — rattle our self-esteem. Negative self-talk isn’t always obvious. Simple statements to ourselves like “I wish I’d gotten to work earlier,” “I wish I were creative” or “I wish I had scored higher on the exam” tend to pile up and weigh on us. If you aren’t sure whether or not your self-talk is negative, try a simple test I use. Ask yourself: “Would I say this to a child?” Additionally, we often question our behaviors and qualities in response to witnessing others who have those qualities. Now we are not only mired in quiet self-critique, we are comparing ourselves to others, a double whammy on our self-esteem. We set ourselves up to fall short in our minds time and time again.

There are benefits to self-doubt. Appropriate amounts of self-doubt motivate us to improve our lives and can create a positive trickle-down effect. When we are motivated to improve our lives, we can. With faith in ourselves, a little trust, a lot of patience and acceptance that our journey is our own, we can indeed improve our lives — and possibly the lives of those around us.

]]>Enterprises across the globe are quickly scaling their businesses to deliver exponential value from the investments in technology and digital programs. There is a greater premium among companies to explore new channels that widen growth sources and accelerate business. Leaders across organizations are adopting digital platforms that enable disruptive business impact.

Over the last few years, Zensar has invested significantly in its digital portfolio with a complete focus on delivering significant business impact to its customers.

At Zensar, we established an early-mover’s advantage in this exciting digital journey through a radical approach. Before we went out to evangelize capabilities in helping customers achieve enhanced business impact through digital transformation, we presented them with proof of our concept — Zensar itself as a living digital organization.

Return on Digital®

Zensar foresaw this rapid transformation and invested in an overarching Return on Digital® (ROD) platform and solutions. ROD is about creating tangible and sustainable business impact by providing full potential of business value at scale. Our Return on Digital® platform enables enterprise transformation across three phases, namely: establishing stability of core systems, digital crossover across the business processes and gaining agility and experience through digital tools. Return on Digital® focuses on four key priorities across all businesses: engaging digital, operating digital, managing digital and partnering digital.

Utilizing these in-house built platforms, Zensar enhances the customer experience through quicker transactions and deployment of intuitive recommendation engines, which serve relevant products and services even before the consumer can ask. Zensar’s crossover services comprise the ability to provide cloud, cybersecurity, containerization and modernization of applications and infrastructures. Zensar’s core systems component provides a back-end system marked by systemic security, availability, stability and efficiency with cloud orchestration.

Zensar has built a comprehensive digital landscape for Zensar associates, customers and partners. We have digitized 50+ business processes with 30+ mobile and cloud-first digital platforms in the past two-plus years to build robust and agile internal systems and be future-ready before our customers needed us to do the same for their organizations. This was achieved by digitally managed mobile dashboards driven by analytics, hybrid cloud and secure systems. From enabling employees to directly connect with their CEO to digital decision-making for CXOs to knowledge-sharing across the organization to idea crowdsourcing and much more, we have brought every process to native mobile, cloud and digital – available anywhere, anytime.

Toward making the next and disruptive leap in delivering scale to an enterprise, Zensar has launched RoD NeXT – Return on Digital, with New and Exponential Technologies.

The RoD framework helps deliver value through optimization of existing business models or by creating new ones diving into the digital transformation agenda, while NeXT introduces new technologies that help create exponential enterprise value.

Digital disruption powered by RoD NeXT brings in disruption across the workforce and business processes, realigning the strategy of the organization. Disruption emerges out of rapid experimentation and executing multiple programs concurrently. Earlier adoptions of digital have often been done with the peripheral integration of new technologies. The new wave of disruptive change, however, comes from the steady maturing of these technologies in the past few years and driving their implementation at the core of the digital business, fundamentally challenging status quo with people, processes and strategy.

RoD NeXT – New and Exponential Technologies

The next wave of differentiation will occur with the adoption of exponential technologies. For a technology to be exponential, it either has to double in performance or reduce costs by half. Sustainable exponential technologies are those that are helping solve today’s business challenges in new ways which were previously not possible. AI, IoT, Blockchain, AR /VR, Nanotech, Autonomous vehicles and Robotics are examples of exponential technologies.

A side effect of ever-increasing digitization is the proliferation of choice one has, with increasing number of decisions reducing the ability to make the right ones, leading to what is called decision fatigue. Hence, the future of design is around building interfaces that can anticipate needs of the user and thereby reduce the number of decisions to make. This essentially requires integrating AI and UI for an outcome that is pleasant in nature and further enhances the experience of the user. ROD NeXT helps prototype the future for the enterprise, involving UX measurement, design thinking and evidence-driven creativity.

2. Artificial Intelligence

RoD NeXT leverages three types of intelligence engines. The simplest level of automation is to eliminate repetitive tasks and thereby improve productivity and provide positive experiences. Such tasks are usually rule-driven and can be easily built using rule-based systems like RPA. Next are engines that can automatically identify repeating patterns from the data that is shown to them. These engines use machine learning algorithms to build models that describe recurring patterns and predict actions/outcomes when new data with similar patterns arise. The highest and most complex systems are the ones that use inferencing techniques to suggest new outcomes, such as deep learning systems that paint or write new ML algorithms.

3. Smart Platforms

Autonomic computing is a self-managing computing model named after, and patterned on, the human body’s autonomic nervous system. As we move to the next wave of digitization, our expectation will be to have all systems work seamlessly with minimal human intervention. RoD NeXT is capable of high-level functioning while keeping the system’s complexity invisible to the user. These platforms process and correlate real-time environmental data arriving from the infrastructure then take appropriate action to self-regulate. This shift from technical systems to ecosystem-enabling platforms is laying the foundation of completely new ways of doing business, bridging the gap between humans and technology.

RoD NeXT, for Human Centric AI

Systems of intelligence are most likely to make an exponential impact if they are built for acceptability by the users and are tuned to provide phenomenal human experience. Human-centric AI, by enabling better modes of human-compute collaboration, can help both in terms of long-term strategic positioning and short-term business benefits.

RoD NeXT solutions leverage AI engines to build models, natural language understanding techniques and deep learning networks to deliver personalized and intuitive augmented experiences to users via a variety of visual-, speech- or gesture-based interfaces. The bedrock of these solutions are self-aware digital platforms that leverage disruptive technologies for exponential benefits. Data is key to delivering all AI-powered experiences and hence RoD NeXT solutions are built to seamlessly ingest, process and manage all forms of data in an enterprise.

]]>It was just another day after soccer practice when twelve boys parked their bikes outside Tham Luang cave in northern Thailand and walked into the cave with their coach. This was not the first time they had done this. It was meant to be a simple expedition, a few minutes to explore and scratch the itch of curiosity. Unexpected torrential rains flooded the cave, trapping the team deep in the cave.

Today, eighteen days later, the last of the team was safely rescued from the cave while the world watched and cheered them on. The coach, who was the first in, was the last out. During the rescue operation, volunteers from around the world arrived in Thailand. The innovative kid-sized diving “sub” sent by Elon Musk went unused, though the fact that he stepped up in such a meaningful way clearly demonstrated just how connected we all are. Thai Navy SEALs, along with an amazingly talented and global set of expert divers, brought the boys and coach to safety after nine highly-charged days of strategy, preparation and unbelievable hard work. From the time the team went missing to today’s last undertaking, the world has been witness to courage, bravery, grit, determination and willpower. We are driven to come together in adversity with an unflinching conviction to overcome the same. Human belief in overcoming even the most difficult of challenges is key to faith in humanity.

The footage shared by British divers who came upon the team trapped in an air pocket was both heart-wrenching and heartwarming. The joy of seeing them safe, coupled with the frustration of not being able to rescue them immediately, was soothed somewhat by the diver’s words, “Many people are coming. We are the first.” I had this same mix of emotions during the Chilean mining accident, Copiapó, already eight years ago. My hope then was like my hope now — it included both fear and excitement, and prayers for all of them throughout the rescue operation.

We’ve watched twelve young boys and a young man stay still and wait. Wait with faith and conviction for others to come to their rescue. We learned how Coach Ake trained as a Buddhist monk and taught the boys to meditate to remain calm during the ordeal. We felt kicked in the gut and deflated over the loss of diver Saman Gunan, who died while delivering oxygen to the boys. We have witnessed a remarkable display of teamwork and leadership on so many levels — from simple soccer practice to Thai Navy SEALs to the willingness of the Thai government to accept the help of the world’s best divers. What is it about these boys, their coach and this incredible rescue effort that let us open our too-often discriminating hearts? These young boys remind us what it is like to be vulnerable, innocent and trusting. They let us remember what it’s like to champion others. We needed to see this unfold exactly the way it has. Whatever it was that touched our hearts, it was a gift to us. We needed this potent reminder of kindness shown toward this resilient group of everyday boys.

Today we feel good about the world. It has been a much-needed refresher course in humanity at its finest. Being there for this Thai soccer team has reinvigorated our hearts.

]]>Connecting People and Poems – An Amazing Book Reading Event in Chicagohttps://sandeepkishore.com/connecting-people-and-poems-an-amazing-book-reading-event-in-chicago-2/
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]]>I have always been fascinated by language. I’m naturally drawn to communication, especially in the form of books, poems, songs and letters. To me, language takes its most beautiful shape in the form of written language. I find myself drawn to writing thoughts down many times over and shaping them until they become poems, with a life all their own. The pull of connecting with people through my writing keeps me coming back to it. There are multiple ways a single poem, however long or short, can be interpreted. No matter how I express a thought or idea it can always mean something entirely different to someone else. This is what creativity and arts are all about.

Consul General Neeta Bhushan and Sandeep Kishore

Yesterday I was honored and privileged to be the guest of Indian Consul General Hon. Neeta Bhushan ji at the Indian Consulate in Chicago at my book reading event. I read poems from my books and participated in a panel discussion on the preservation of Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu and Bangla, all put together by the Consulate and Hindi Lovers Club. What an amazing display of love of culture! It’s wonderful to witness others openly embracing US culture while lovingly tending to Indian languages and culture. It may seem as though the two could not co-exist, but they do, and I saw it done with grace.

It’s always a delight to read poems to an engaged audience and my special thanks to all who attended the event at CGI Chicago. The audience was exceptionally attentive and appreciative of the reading from my second book, Old Seeds of a New Tree. It’s always amazing to see the liveliness and energy of Indian diaspora and I think poems connect everyone. They relate to us one-on-one and take us all into our own journey of thoughts and ideas, love and affection, pain and growing up, success and determination. I was deeply touched by meeting with all, with their comments and more importantly how they felt being a part of the poems.

My contributions on the importance of preserving Hindi language are from a deep place. Hindi is pervasive in all my childhood memories — it’s my native language. My entire schooling, till I got to IIT Bombay, was at a Hindi medium school in Patna, Bihar. It is a key part of my foundation. The feeling was mutual for Professor Mandira Bhaduri of the University of Chicago and her relationship with Bangla. And it is understandable that the other two panelists, Mr. Adil Farid and Dr. Ganesh Visvabharathy, felt the same about Urdu and Sanskrit, respectively. Language is so deeply embedded in us that it comes as close to defining us as anything can. It even gives us a sense of purpose and self.

TV Asia interview

At book readings, I am often asked which is my favorite poem that I have written. I love all my poems! Some days I relate more to the poems of aspirational hopes and dreams. Some days other poems help me to stay pensive and quiet. It is often the mood of a poem that sticks with me. Language is the tool that creates the mood for readers. It’s not always easy to translate perfectly from Hindi to English. This was a challenge for me when I wrote these poems in Hindi and wanted them to translate into English. I had to find a way to translate my poems from Hindi to English without losing the nuances and feelings. A poem is more about meaning than actual words, so I made a decision to translate more loosely to retain the original meaning. English clearly is an acquired language for me and I have tried my best to do the translation keeping the sentiments and flow intact.

Today’s event was also about language, but I see it as more than that. To fully celebrate language is to celebrate heritage and culture. Many intelligent discussions broke down the logical reasons for sustaining these languages, but emotional reasons were valid and just as strong. I have been fortunate enough to live in the worlds of business and creativity — different but complementary. They each give meaning and purpose to what I do. Two worlds can co-exist: the ancient language of Sanskrit in Hinduism and modern Sanskrit literature are an example. We don’t have to close the door on heritage to open the door to the future. Heritage and culture run deep. None are perfect but they are ours and give us a sense of identity and geographic place in the world. If we are responsible with our ideals, we can celebrate these both for a long time to come.

Back on my flight again after the event yesterday, I will no doubt be drawn in again by an idea, a feeling or thought. The tactile act of writing somehow taps into my mind in a more meaningful way. Once again I’ll follow that creative compulsion and be glad I did. By honoring these creative moments, I’m honoring my passion for language and poems. I hope you do too.

]]>Harvard University is awe-inspiring. The oldest university in the US exudes an air of establishment and great minds. It’s post-Spring Break in April and near the close of the current academic year, the campus feels alive. Cambridge, Massachusetts is chillier than I expected. Recent rains will soon prove their value by way of new buds on the massive trees.

I came here at the invitation of Professor Joseph Fuller, Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School, to participate in a classroom discussion of his case study on Zensar. The case study was examined in class. On behalf of our entire company, I had the distinct privilege and honor to participate in three back-to-back classes. Bright, discerning students discussed, deliberated and questioned several aspects of change, succession and the roadmap to transformation for our company. Interacting with students and listening to them for over four hours was absolutely riveting and greatly enriching.

Just as I hoped, my footsteps did indeed echo down the established university corridor as I made my way to Room 209 in Aldrich Hall. Professor Fuller and I chatted as students arrived for class. The students, approximately one hundred and fifty over three classes, were exceptionally engaged in class. Discussions were sharp, astute and lively. Professor Fuller’s opening comments detailed Zensar’s shift in direction after I became CEO & MD. He also called out successions from the previous CEO, the culture of the company, the changes we’d made and the options and choices available to us. Transitions happen in business every day, of course, but the challenge here was how to transform a tightly-knit, family-like work environment into an organization of empowered employees creating the new and next phase of Zensar through living digital — without losing the original good qualities. Those original qualities could act as a launch pad for even greater things for employees. They were important to preserve.

The case study focused on the transition period up to April 2016, roughly four months after I joined Zensar. Students were asked to provide input on where a new CEO should focus efforts, what changes should be addressed and what choices should be made. The class discussed the culture of the organization and gave weight to the close-knit vibe. Students debated the most effective and appropriate pace of change to come. They deliberated the hiring of new talent from outside Zensar. They even discussed whether I should be India-based or continue to live in the US! Professor Joe Fuller and Tanvi Deshpande co-authored the case study, working on it for close to 8 months. They produced a comprehensive case study that made for spirited, interactive discussion. Professor Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, also took the case study for her class. I was fortunate to be a part of those discussions as well.

It’s important for organizations to have an identity and a sense of purpose. It’s equally key to ensure that organizations live that daily in the way they plan, invest, grow, measure and learn. For us at Zensar, it was vital that we transform our own company into a one hundred percent living digital company first — we had to walk the walk. Reinventing a fifty-four-year-old publicly listed company had its own challenges of change management. Given those challenges and the opportunities created for our employees by upskilling them on new technologies, we chose to make those changes ourselves. We owed it to our people to enable everyone to succeed. This was a win-win.

Our first initiative was our internal mobile app, ZenVerse. I took charge as CEO and MD thirty days after joining Zensar. We launched ZenVerse on day one. ZenVerse is a platform allowing any Zensarian to ask a question directly to me. In almost all cases, I answer these questions myself. All employees can see the questions, my answers and can comment with their own feedback. They can even like it or dislike it. In case I need one of my leaders to add more to the answers I provide, or if I simply don’t have an answer, I tag one of the leaders in the company to add or provide the answer. When I travel to various offices, meet our employees and attend events, I take pictures or video with my iPhone and post them for everyone to see what’s going on with their workmates around the world. With global operations and our people around the world, this is one way of getting to know everyone. We have sentimental analytics on ZenVerse calling out areas where conversations are taking place on a real-time basis. This drives transparency and accountability. ZenVerse was the first digital platform we launched and has become an integral, positive part of our company. Over the last two years we have built thirty different digital platforms with over four hundred and thirty releases. The planning and level of work that have gone into these digital platforms are testaments to a willingness to move forward and be adaptable. A company’s culture is its identity. It’s important to foster it. Zensarians have enabled change that is both home grown and world class.

April is a lovely time on the Harvard campus, no doubt. It feels promising. Between the broad discussions with the students and recalling the accomplishments we made internally at Zensar, I am reminded of the complex grace on display when people come together to discuss, devise, solve and build. Many thanks to the gracious, gifted professors and the engaged students. Thank you for the conversation — and for the reminder that accomplishments made at home are the most valuable.

]]>Saturday March 17th was a humbling day in many ways. For an hour, I walked the neighborhood of Kharadi in Pune, India with my fellow Zensarians as we came together to help clean up one small patch of the city. We were a committed team of 100-plus Zensarians, equipped with brooms, rubber gloves and trash bags. We collected trash from streets and crumpled plastic bags from alleys. We made quick work of revealing the beauty of Kharadi. We reiterated our commitment and respect to the community where we are headquartered because we care. We were all workers with a common sense of caring optimism for our community. Our work did not go unnoticed. Shop owners and residents were happy to see us and thanked us. We had strength in numbers and conviction in what we were doing. Zensarians showed up both physically and mentally. Positive attitudes were in abundance. I hope some of that positivity rubbed off to those in Kharadi.

At Zensar, we have ambitious CSR goals. We have total commitment to all of the communities we serve — every location where we are present globally, both within and outside India. Our volunteerism aligns to the community. We must show up in a meaningful way to contribute. We know that community giving often entails caring for all people, especially those that need help, through education, library, labs, blood drives, clean-up initiatives, food donations or something similar. As a technology company, it made sense to apply our own touch to CSR volunteering so that our people can commit and track their own actions and engage more meaningfully with the society. We took advantage of our proprietary ZenCSR app to power this initiative from start to finish.

We all have a huge responsibility to give back to our community. There is strong evidence that when we selflessly contribute, the entire society follows suit. As a leader, I felt a sense of pride. As an individual, I felt solidarity with my team and the community we serve.

Kharadi will need maintenance. It can become littered again. But today, someone walks a cleaner street. Small actions go a long way. We can all make a choice to make a change.

Last Friday, a colleague’s son was in lockdown at his high school in Austin, Texas. He was sitting against the wall with his peers in pitch dark. No one moved or talked. Later he relayed his thoughts to his mother — “I was nervous but not scared. If it comes down to it, I’ll take action. I won’t go quietly crouched along a wall. I’ll help others.” He is sixteen, making adult choices he shouldn’t have to make. We have left our children to deal with the fallout of our society not coming together to protect them.

Parkland, Florida was the site of yet another horrific, deadly shooting with yet another military-style weapon at yet another American high school. These devastating events feel like they are becoming the tragic norm. Yes, the world changes, but some changes are unacceptable. Now a fresh lineup of pundits and politicians with feeble rationale elbow their way into the spotlight. Students sit by enormously frustrated, waiting for lawmakers to come up with a real solution. They wait and wait. They have waited long enough.

The time has come for lawmakers to act decisively. We have failed our children, and they have told us so. Now they are stepping up to take charge. They are holding rallies, protests and town halls, often in the face of ridicule and harassment. Their speeches are sincere, intelligent and astute. They demonstrate immense courage. It is humbling to watch them move forward, take charge and make their voices heard. This is how it all begins, a movement that shapes the future.

These students are not standing on the shoulders of giants, they are the giants themselves. They have the ambition to forgo excuses and create positive change for their future. They have the determination to accomplish what we as a society have been unable to accomplish — to create a safe environment. We must listen with open minds, encourage them and support them. These brave hearts, bright minds and hopeful individuals are already leading the way. This is their world now.

]]>Mr. Zuckerberg’s pledge to fix Facebook’s muddied news feed comes after a highly contentious, polluted year of news stories bombarding Facebook users. Many hornets’ nests have been stirred up by special interest groups, troublemakers and internet trolls for a variety of reasons, mainly self-serving. There will always be a handful of bad hanging around anything good. This has tarnished, once again, the promise of social media as a platform for freedom of speech and a potential force for good. Mr. Zuckerberg’s mission to replace quantity content with quality, more meaningful content is a good one, if not an easy one. This shift will bring difficulties, almost certainly with advertisers. More relevant content means less room for irrelevant content. Ad space will be top dollar. Small brands may get crowded out. While there is no perfect business model, this change is a good one.

Individuals have high expectations of those providing a service, even if it’s free. Facebook has over two billion monthly users — a staggering amount of voices. Free or not, Facebook users ultimately call the shots. We want Facebook to reflect who we are. We want our likes, shares and views to matter. We are even territorial about ‘our’ personal pages. From its inception, Facebook has been a social platform, a way to connect. Mark Zuckerberg has shared his personal passion for communicating with us. Over time, Facebook has developed a life of its own. We’ve rolled with its changes. We know, however, that we have some ownership in this platform.

It’s one thing to emphatically donate untold amounts of money to charitable causes around the world. It’s another to step up, declare openly that your business needs improvement and let the stock market chips fall where they may. Careers, jobs, families and livelihoods are at risk from any sudden move at Facebook. Facebook, like any business, has a responsibility to step up as needed. Business is never one perfect swell that breaks on a beach. There are many important issues to navigate at any given time. News, violence, privacy, ethics, politics, bullying, advertising — these require constant attention. Mr. Zuckerberg has not shirked his responsibilities. In fact, the opposite seems true. As a business leader, few have learned ‘on-the-job’ with more grace, success or authentic concern. Mr. Zuckerberg sets a good example. He admits that Facebook won’t be able to correct its feed perfectly. He also acknowledges Facebook’s own part in a divided community of users. None of us can do a perfect job nor predict with accuracy how this will play out. No business leader has been in this position before nor gone quite the distance. Clearly Mr. Zuckerberg understands that his role comes with great responsibility, and that is a huge start. There is a price for these changes to be sure. But some things, like integrity, are invaluable.